Mutual Arising
by FuckNoirFolklor
Summary: A chip off of the old block splinters from a bridge he thought was built with bricks, but it isn't as if it actually changed the odds of dependent origination and the inevitable rat race that must follow. Sequel to Sour Grapes from "The Truth is, Nobody Actually Cares!" series.


Parting the skyward batch of coltsfoot plants in front of him, Kitaro played with a live caterpillar in his mouth. The beseeching howls of the human he'd abandoned didn't so much as make him shudder. In fact, though he made no face, he was more than happy to leave his bon vivant friend with the carouse, hungry yokai that had gathered beyond the Shindai Temple. They were nothing special; just Konaki-Jijii, several of those he went to university with, and their friends.

Nobody except the old weeper was particularly happy to see him, still quite miffed that he'd meddled in Dr. Gamotsu's monster state project. The only reason they hadn't gormandized his flesh while dancing around with candles adorned atop their heads was because of his subtle peace offering. Having lured a particularly off-color larcenist and molester with the promise of adventure unrecompensed, Kitaro had in actuality escorted him to a gathering of famished demons.

Each and every one of them would have their chance to torment the prey he'd tossed in their vicinity, but first he wanted to drink up the beatnik man's fear like the snake sake that was making it's rounds. By the time the iconoclast stuck-up rashly threw a million yen in his lap in impetuous hopes for Kitaro to dance with the requesting whims of nature in his stead, he'd been satisfied enough to gambol back to the wreckage they'd caused on their way. It was a shame, too, for Kitaro did enjoy riding the greedy man's motorcycle. That alone was a ritual in of itself.

Though he had a marvelous time gorging on sukiyaki and swigging Konaki-Jijii's habushu when he wasn't looking, Kitaro wouldn't overstay his welcome just in case his former classmates changed their minds and decided sukiyaki, snake, and pervert wasn't enough for their entertainment.

"A million yen! Few people can actually use this much as pocket money! After all the rotten luck, I've gotten more than the average income!" Flipping through the checkbook in a bout of frivolity, Kitaro reveled all the way back to frowzy old civilization. It was no wonder money hadn't been evenly distributed to citizens, if the upper class were keeping all of this to themselves! Capitalism was quite the discovery indeed! "I'll live it up like the prime minister, tee-hee-hee-hee!"

That cackle was all too familiar to Nezumi-Otoko, who happened to be at the right place at the right time. Rather, with a gasket-blown Medama-Oyaji barking orders at him, he had little better to do than hunt Kitaro down. It had been weeks since he stormed out of Nezumi-Otoko's depository, no doubt causing heaps of trouble without him.

"Beyond any doubt, that's not the kind of money a birdbrained kid like you should have," Nezumi-Otoko artfully snatched the prize from Kitaro's hands, whom hadn't reacted fast enough to the taller demon's precipitancy to protest efficiently. His hard-earned money!

"Nezumi-Otoko! You give that back!" Kitaro screaked, festinating after him and nearly choking on the caterpillar he had toyed with in his mouth for so long. Nezumi-Otoko was fast, but somehow the scraggy legged boy was hot on his heels. Full of underhanded tricks, the sly rat flicked Medama-Oyaji off of his shoulder and broke a tumescent, torrid wind from his hind, which would buck off the old man and his bulldogged pup all in one go.

"How was that, Kitaro? That's payback for making me look for your sorry ass! Now you two can build a bridge, bury the hatchet, and go to Hell!" Nezumi-Otoko heckled, skittered, and hopped from foot to foot, self-satisfied with the fact Kitaro could never reach his rags.

"You got me…" Kitaro admitted, no longer asphyxiating from the deadly caterpillar fart combo. He was too stunned to really assimilate whatever else he was being teased about, legs hanging in the air where he'd fallen on his back. At the very least, he hadn't fallen into the same trap.

The devotion of his whole being and his quest so far…None of it mattered. Not now that his father had finally caught up to him, smacked into his face even. Kitaro, for the time being, had ceased turning in the running wheel. Nezumi-Otoko, on the other hand, took off like the rat he was, enchanted by the familiar trap.

"Kitaro! You have some explaining to do," Medama-Oyaji coughed, his pitch indicating that he may have been more ireful with Kitaro than the pungent smell that invaded his narrowing pupil. "Kitaro!"

His offspring said nothing. After the weeks he had spent trying to find him, his own son had nothing to say. Though he'd been knocked off of the proverbial wheel, he reflected no shame. Rather, his shuttered eye stared at Medama-Oyaji as if seeing right through him. Kitaro's legs fell as his father rose to look up at his indifferent expression.

"Nezumi-Otoko told you I was looking for you! Do you realize how worried sick I've been?"

"I don't listen to what Nezumi-Otoko says," Kitaro shrugged his shoulder, stolid and unconcerned. Before Fake Kitaro returned from Hell with his chanchanko, he had utmost shame for disappointing the man he idolized the most. Before witnessing his father get kidnapped as a bargaining chip and shut down his worries in the name of their fallen clan, he cared about the old man's safety and dignity. Before Enma Daio let slip the whereabouts of his mother, he trusted his father unconditionally. Kitaro knew barely anything about his mother, nor any other woman for that matter. As much as he wished to blow it off, he was every bit frustrated. Until he stopped running on the wheel for the time being, that is.

The pieceous pupil that bore into Kitaro remained grim at his supercilious retort. Medama-Oyaji might have seemed weak and had endured numerous humiliating insults to his honor since his rebirth, but he had no intention of letting his own son belittle his spirit. "Don't talk back to me like that! How could you dismiss your own father? You are to listen to me! Why have you interfered with innocents? I saw them while enjoying the Olympics."

"What an absurd choice of words," Kitaro nasalized, the very movement of his lips subdued. He let his father continue to corner him with an air of superiority, no energy to laugh. "There was only one person that fell for it, and he didn't give a damn. He was happy to leave his child behind."

Medama-Oyaji bristled at his son's lugubrious justification, but found he had difficulty arguing back. It was as if anything he said would change things permanently. Kitaro had never spoken to him that way before, had never lied so boldly to his face. Nevertheless, he would finally put his foot down. "Kitaro, I know there were two."

"What does that have to do with it? The dupe shouldn't have been looking for Nezumi-Otoko anyway. The old doc was a quack. He was so out of his own tree that he thought chasing that misborn rip-off would glorify his reputation as a doctor. Smelled like a crock of shit to me. I did the poor sap a favor, for a price. What's so bad about that? I have Enma Daio's blessings, remember?"

Medama-Oyaji clung to the button of Kitaro's stitched up school uniform, not about to be thrown off by his dissident son as he stood to begin his trek back to his home, too tired to bother chasing after the legal tender for the moment. Kitaro was now back on and barely walking on the wheel, but uncertain of what he wanted to give chase to.

"That isn't what I mean. Those didn't include the invitations! Look at yourself! All of that effort wasn't just wrong, you're rotting inside. Did you think even once about their other halves? Those demons, living the lives of their counterparts…It negates whatever you think you've done. Kitaro! Are you listening to me? Have you forgotten what you are?"

At first without a word, Kitaro peeled his father off of him and clutched him in a manner just tight enough to indicate repressed choler. It did not restrict the way he breathed, but it certainly took his breath away that the boy had become so unfilial. "I don't care. I've heard it countless times already. It has nothing to do with me that matters. I'm doing my own business. You should be proud with the progress I've made. I've survived the human world."

"It's a waste of effort, Kitaro…" Even though Kitaro was not using even close to all of the force he was capable of, Medama-Oyaji was crushed. Had he truly no gratitude for his ancestors? Medama-Oyaji had already been suspicious of it and could see it happening, and had sat himself on his own proverbial spike while his son ran around making end's meet. When did it all go wrong for Kitaro? Medama-Oyaji had watched him transform from an anguished but nonetheless compassionate baby to a baneful, sullen culmination of post-war expansion…

"Why do you say that?" The offish boy queried in mock curiosity that his face was too frozen to signify. As far as he was concerned, he wouldn't be in this mess if his father hadn't been stupid enough to sell his own blood to the humans to begin with, while he was fatally ill no less. Did he wish for him to blend in with them or not? A mosquito biting an iron bull could miraculously draw blood before Kitaro could break free from this double bind.

"Because the commodities of the human world that you seek are poisoning you!" Medama-Oyaji posited at the mercy of his son. Kitaro's clinical, cheerless expression mutated despite himself as a spectacle of icy giggles retreated from his hard-hearted chest. It wasn't like him to laugh at his father this way. It wasn't something he thought through, but once he had situated to his gut reaction, he had no qualms with letting it go.

"You mean like you and my mother had done before I was born? You didn't think the consequences of your schemes through then, so why pretend that you are now?" Kitaro intoned with a throat crackling as if his words were spitting fire. This confrontation had gone from giving chills to the progenitor to oxidizing him with toxic fumes.

"That is enough! The circumstances were different!" The eyeball flared, for it was too much for him to handle anymore. Kitaro was brazenly unappreciative of every loving thought he'd ever spared for the boy, moreover attacking the roots of them in an intrusive and deprecating way. Medama-Oyaji's rage inspired Kitaro to loosen his algid grip and resume his vacant-faced sulking. Of course his father wouldn't see it his way; when he climbed Kitaro's hand, his posture was anything but open-armed.

"What do you want from me then, old man?" Kitaro murmured gradually, his own nerves becoming shivery and delicate. As far as Medama-Oyaji was concerned, it was his unfeeling child's reaction to the bitter breeze tousling his hair rather than his own command that stopped him in his tracks. Kitaro averted his eye, his body language finally indicating that the stony barrier between father and son had been knocked down.

"You are to keep your mouth shut and think about what you've said after you listen to me, boy," Medama-Oyaji didn't let out so much as a discomposed sigh, ultimately firm in delivering his rebuke, "The human world has various commodities, and it's true I have enjoyed them just as I have enjoyed spending my life with your mother. Our actions were out of desperation, however! Not for the sake of luxuries! You've seen how power and greed corrupts. Our clan was hunted, tortured, and enslaved for centuries. What you and I have done to survive is something I permitted because it's doing what we must! Don't you understand that it hurts us, too? You must survive, Kitaro. You are the last of the Ghost Tribe and our only future!"

Without missing a beat, Kitaro shrugged. He was asked not to speak, and he didn't particularly enjoy these lectures. It was enough to spur him on into his house, avoiding the basement for the time being. No sense in burdening their housemate with this disagreement. They were words away from disowning each other; Kitaro just knew it. His father would go on and on about how disappointed he was as if it wasn't obvious. In fact, after a few hundred times, Kitaro was beginning to think he was understanding what it meant to be a mortal. It made him smile, to think he could win an argument with Nezumi-Otoko with this plan.

"What makes you think I must?" Kitaro spoke, breaking the silence his father had tried to discipline. Running his fingers through the fine hairs of his vest, he continued, "You said I was a child, an ordinary child, when I take this off! I can die if I want."

The barbs before infuriated Medama-Oyaji, but this especially rose the pressures of the vessels in his eye. The movement of his son's hand was unexpected and the old man fell none too gently. Kitaro had expressed a desire to die before, but back then he seemed miserable and love sick, not playfully thrilled beyond measure.

"Do not dare insult your ancestors like that! I have told you time and time again, but you refuse to get it through that thick skull of yours! You're so damn rotten that there's little hope of teaching you respect!"

Try as he might not to be affected, even Kitaro had unexpectedly begun to feel overwhelmed. Despite his adult-like mannerisms, he hadn't the development it took to competently compete in an argument that required such verbose sensitivity with old men like Medama-Oyaji and Nezumi-Otoko. He knew he had a point to make and ground to stand on, but all he could draw in the landscape of his mind were blanks. Just like the kettle his father had threatened to drown himself in, he thought all the boiling water over the years had chilled. That was not the case, repressed as he was. The pressure was whistling in his ears in the form of tinnitus and he smoldered aggressively, the hair on his head standing rigidly in position to flick.

"I didn't ask for their dead weight, not ever! Stop pretending you get it more than me! You left Neko-san to die for some idiot that couldn't even live out his own life without harassing me for my race all because he buttered you up some and showed you an image of your ideal son! If that wasn't bad enough, you always get between me and Caroline-chan! If it wasn't insulting me and shutting me down when I'm upset, you insult her and make her think I'm some indecent chauvinist!"

"I've had it with being your scapegoat and I'm sick of being told that I'm hopeless and stupid!" Quarreled Kitaro, contending with his melting eye and leaking nose as he stormed off with enough force from his footfalls to spring his father up to fall back harshly down. Medama-Oyaji wouldn't know it and wouldn't expect it at all, but Kitaro was fiercely missing Mizuki. The conniption and yawping had apalled Medama-Oyaji so, he couldn't even begin to catch up with what his son must have been thinking.

With a forlorn, weary sigh, Medama-Oyaji did as he always had done whenever Kitaro ran off; he remained alone where he was left. He didn't know what else he could do for the lonesome boy when he felt so forsaken himself. As always, it was probably better this way. When one was so caught up in human games, there is never anything anyone can do to save him from himself.

Perhaps in his own way, Kitaro was right. There was no future, so there also was no hopeless future, and they weren't so different after all. Medama-Oyaji just couldn't see it no matter how much he strained his eye. He was just as preoccupied with grudges of the past, and his son had grown up compensating for his bitterness. He had corrupted the boy just as personally if not more so than Mizuki and the other humans. He had never any other child other than Kitaro, but the kind little boy he missed was dead to him just like his late wife.

He couldn't bring out that gentle child in Kitaro anymore, nor could he take back his own idleness. The boy was always doing his bidding and trying to interact with a world that never wanted him, all while his pitiful old dad bummed around in a ceramic bowl without so much as doing something nice and affectionate for him for a change. Medama-Oyaji wept, feeling the loss of a pudgy finger to wipe dry his tears. How different would his precious baby boy's life had been if he had just showed him more often that he was loved and appreciated?

The interpenetration of the causal chains that lead to Kitaro's predicament now had bound him to this outcome, but for how long? How long had he toiled desperately in this double bind while his own self-proclaimed real father was too blind to see? Medama-Oyaji could only hope that one day, he could be set free. He deeply wanted to respect his son's freedom, for as long as incidents between he and his surrogate parent occurred. He just wished that soon, this corrupted little boy could see for himself who he was before his harrowing birth, without interference…

* * *

**Original Author's Notes:**

**I found the relationship between Kitaro and Medama-Oyaji flawed, particularly in Hakaba Kitaro. The kid is completely enmeshed and left to fend for his emotions all by himself, of which he is directly shut down from expressing. This stunts his ability to mature and is far too much for a young boy to handle. Some of Medama-Oyaji's actions are really messed up, considering how much Kitaro idolized him. As the story progresses, it's hinted that by the end the two are in the middle of falling out. I thought about the reasons why and drew some inspiration from later iterations, paying close attention to different versions of Medama-Oyaji to see what makes his regrets tick. The result of my exploration was this.  
**


End file.
